by Toby Neal
Lei shut her eyes. Was it too much to hope that the body wasn’t Chaz? But Stevens had made the identification himself . . . Her husband was cautious and careful with that kind of thing, knowing how emotionally harrowing a mistake could be.
Chaz had become a family friend over the years, a frequent visitor at gatherings in their home. He’d helped work on their house when they rebuilt it after a fire. At first, he’d come with his wife. Lei had found Cheryl less likeable than Chaz; she was a bitter, complaining woman with no reason that Lei could see for her negativity. After the divorce, Chaz had become someone Lei worried about and reached out to, often inviting him over for a home-cooked meal when he was between captain gigs.
But as much as she cared about Chaz, he was much more to Pono—he’d been the equivalent of a brother to a man who only had sisters.
Pono was going to be out for blood, just when they needed to keep a clear head.
Fortunately, the Captain had already pulled him, given him time off, and reassigned Stevens and Mahoe to help Lei.
As if she’d conjured him, Pono arrived. He drove Stanley up to her, past her, and down the cement incline to the sally port entry. He jumped out, slamming the truck’s door, and turned to face Lei as she trotted down the incline.
Her partner’s skin was ashy with stress, but he looked terrifying with his face set in a fierce scowl and his muscles pumped.
“That’s not a parking spot, Pono. You have to move the truck. What if they get a delivery while we’re in there?” Lei used her voice like a whip, hoping to slash through across the single-minded rage and pain she saw in Pono’s dark eyes.
Pono’s mouth tightened behind his bristling mustache, but he said nothing. He brushed past her like a storm on the move, hitting the pneumatic doors with his shoulder.
Lei hurried after him. “I’m not sure if they’re set up for you to make the identification yet. I didn’t get a text from Dr. G . . .”
“I have to see him.” Pono strode on.
Lei threw up her hands in frustration behind his massive back. Well, she’d tried.
They reached the second set of interior doors, which could only be opened from the inside. A glass safety panel threaded with wire gave view into the main work area. The privacy curtain was open, and Lei could tell at a glance that Dr. Gregory was not yet ready for them. He was bent over the naked corpse of a brown-skinned male. Dr. G wore magnifiers and moved a spotlight slowly over the body as he dictated.
The medical examiner was searching for evidence on Chaz’s body.
Under normal circumstances in an identification, the body was presented to the next of kin neatly draped on a gurney in the sally port, all gore hidden except for the face. If the family member seemed too distraught, they were kept in a locked area outside the morgue, and only allowed to view the victim’s face via a video feed.
Pono reached the safety glass window and looked in.
“Chaz!” His bass voice was a howl of grief, and it boomed in the enclosed space, making Lei, and Dr. Gregory inside, jump.
Dr. G wore his famous yellow smiley face rubber apron, and thankfully, it wasn’t yet streaked with blood and bodily fluids. His voice reverberated through an audio feed. “I’m not ready for you yet, Pono.”
“Let me see my cousin.” Pono rumbled, but his voice cracked on the last word. He hung his head suddenly. “I promise I won’t touch the body or do anything crazy. But I need to see him.”
Dr. Gregory lifted the magnifying lenses off of his glasses, edging them up to the sides. The circles of glass on curved metal attachments were like comical eyebrows, but Dr. G’s face was dead serious as he walked toward them. “I need your word you won’t disturb anything. I’m still doing evidence collection.”
“I’ll be good,” Pono promised.
Dr. G hit the big, round entry button with his elbow, keeping his potentially contaminated gloved hands away from the button.
Pono seem to freeze as the doors opened. His head was still lowered like a bull considering charging . . . but then, a hand came up to cover his eyes. The rage propelling her partner seemed to evaporate, leaving him stranded and frozen. He was going to have to acknowledge the reality of his cousin’s death.
Lei stepped up next to Pono, slipping a hand through his, pressing against his side and tugging him forward. “You’re not alone. We’ll do this together.” She gave him a gentle nudge. “You got dis, bruddah.”
Dr. Gregory returned to the body, standing protectively at Chaz’s head, as they walked into the big, open room with its shiny wall of refrigerator doors, metal tables, and useful drain in the center of the floor.
Chaz lay uncovered on one of the wheeled metal tables. His large, stocky physique was as empty of life as a discarded husk. Exsanguination had bleached the color from his warm brown skin, leaving it a grayish yellow and mottled with dark patches of lividity.
Dr. Gregory had propped up the man’s head on one of the portable stanchions. At first, Chaz appeared unmarked as they approached—but as they got closer, the cause of death was abundantly clear.
A deep slash had laid open the layers of tissue in his neck all the way down to the bone. The edges of the wound had peeled back in a gruesome imitation of a grin.
Lei kept the hand that wasn’t curled around Pono’s tense arm in her pocket, rubbing the bone hook, as she scanned the body for any other clues.
Nothing else appeared to mark him. No bruises, ligature marks, scrapes or scratches. This was the body of a healthy male in his mid-thirties, brutally murdered, with no sign of defensive wounds.
Had someone he’d known snuck up on him?
“As you can see, cause of death is pretty obvious.” Dr. Gregory’s usually cheerful voice was somber. “And as this is a formal next of kin identification, Pono, I need you to state, for the record, the identity of this man.”
“That’s my cousin. Charles Kalani Fukuhara Kaihale. Chaz.” Pono covered his eyes, turning away. “Did he suffer?”
“It was very quick,” Dr. Gregory said softly.
Lei pressed Pono’s arm tight with both of hers, leaning into him.
Of course, Pono as a cop knew the mechanics of death as it resulted from a slash wound like Chaz’s, but Lei had seen and heard that question many a time from a family member confronted by murder. Loved ones of a victim wanted comfort, the hope that the victim hadn’t suffered, even when death had obviously been violent.
There was simply no way to psychologically prepare for a moment like this, and witnesses, even in law enforcement, seemed to go through the same stages: shock, denial, confusion, wishful thinking, bargaining, anger, and eventually, some measure of acceptance. Of peace.
But sometimes, that peace never came. They knew too much.
It wasn’t peace vibrating through Pono’s big body as she held his arm. “No defensive wounds. Chaz didn’t see it coming.” Pono’s voice was dry and harsh. “He called me, you know. I thought it was an April Fools’ joke. But he told me pirates were on their way. How did the pirates get him without him seeing it coming?”
Dr. Gregory cleared his throat. “I have the answer to that. He was tased first. I can’t show you without turning the body, but there are prong marks on his upper back. So, to answer your question, Pono—no, he didn’t suffer.”
Pono’s body shivered although his voice was a growl. “He was slaughtered like an animal.”
Lei’s phone vibrated against her hip. She dug it out of her pocket, glancing at the caller ID. “Pono, it’s Tiare on the line. Why don’t you step into the sally port and talk to your wife?” She hit the door button and pushed Pono out physically, handing the man her phone as it squawked with Tiare’s loud exclamations.
The door shut, closing and locking. Her partner stood just outside, his head bent, his big body curved inward, the phone to his ear. Lei couldn’t hear the couple talking through the thick glass.
His wife could calm him, help him. Lei couldn’t do anything more for her partner.
/> She pulled the heavy privacy curtain shut so he wouldn’t see the body again, and turned back to Dr. Gregory.
The ME had returned to Chaz. “I’m so sorry for Pono and his family.” He shook out a fresh drape and settled it over the corpse, tucking it gently around the man’s body. Lei had always appreciated Dr. G’s compassion for the dead—he treated them with care, dignity and respect.
“You were right to tell Pono what you did. Chaz didn’t suffer. But I worry that the crew and the family who were also on that boat were drowned. Having recently almost experienced that means of death, I don’t recommend it.” Lei grimaced. “Salt water inhalation hurts like crazy and unconsciousness takes way too long.”
“I know.” Dr. Gregory smoothed Chaz’s black hair away from his brow. “This kill seems professional to me, Lei. No fuss, no sentimentality. The killer zapped Chaz from behind. Chaz fell down face first—the lividity on the front of his body tells me that. The murderer walked up, lifted Chaz’s head up by the hair, slit his throat, and dropped him to lie face down and bleed out. There’s lividity on his nose, chin, forehead, and the front of his body that suggests he lay that way for some hours.”
Lei flashed to the blood pool in the stateroom they’d found on board the Sea Cloud. She told Dr. Gregory about that discovery. “That spot was likely where Chaz was killed. We have a viable blood sample. I’ll have that sent over to you to compare with Chaz, and we can make sure it’s his.” She glanced over at the pretty painted shoji screen that Dr. Gregory and Dr. Tanaka used to separate their personal work area from the larger room. “Maybe killing Chaz quickly ensured the rest of the passengers were compliant with whatever the attackers had planned.”
“Maybe so. It was certainly fast and brutal. I’ll watch for your sample from the office.” Dr. Gregory inclined his head. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a post to perform. I’ll let you know if it tells us anything new.”
Chapter Twelve
Pono had driven off to meet his wife when Lei hopped into her silver Tacoma, rolling down the windows to let the heat out and enjoy a breath of fresh air after the morgue. She headed back to the station to meet with the Captain, Stevens and Mahoe about the recent discovery of Chaz’s body. Thankfully, Tiare had left her shift at the hospital, taking emergency bereavement leave, and she and Pono were united and heading for home. The Kaihales had always set a great example for Lei and Stevens to aspire to with their teamwork and unconditional support of each other.
Lei’s phone beeped. She glanced at it on the seat beside her, and spotted Sophie’s private number. She put in her Bluetooth and picked up the call.
“I dug up a lot of interesting information for you.” Sophie said. “Peterson was in financial trouble.”
“I already got that from his lawyer,” Lei said.
“Peterson has a partner, John Ramsey. Ramsey has been making trouble, trying to get a higher cut of the percentage of their company when the IP goes public. As a result, Ramsey’s lawyer has tied up the public offering. Meanwhile, leading up to this, Peterson had expanded, trying to fluff up the company before the release. He’s heavily in debt for all of his personal wealth, as well as company expansion.”
“How did you get all this?” Lei navigated onto busy Hana Highway. “The lawyer would only talk in hypotheticals.”
“Better you don’t know,” Sophie said. “I have my ways, and you wouldn’t have called me if you wanted to know what they were.”
Lei snorted a laugh. “True dat, seestah! What exactly does Enviro Enterprises do as a company?”
“If what Peterson and Ramsey have invented works, they’ve built a pretty fabulous process to address the problem of ocean plastic pollution.” Sophie’s voice warmed with excitement. “It begins with a harvesting device that can be hitched to the back of any boat. The boat tows the device through the water, and floating plastic litter is harvested into a receptacle. The device sieves the water out leaving the plastic waste behind.”
Lei frowned, swinging her truck around a tourist rental vehicle so loaded with surfboards and sports gear that the portable strap racks were listing to the side. “That doesn’t sound revolutionary. We are still faced with the problem of disposing of the recovered waste.”
“I’m not finished yet! The plastics are then fed into an integrated crusher. The crusher has a heating element that melts the waste into a compressed cube. And then, and here is the really beautiful part, the cubes are fed into a fuel conversion chamber. That device can be attached to an existing boat motor, and the plastic cubes become the fuel source.”
Lei’s mind was immediately buzzing with questions. “Are you sure? This sounds. . . too good to be true. Bulky as well. How can plastic cubes become the equivalent of gasoline?”
“Don’t ask me for all the engineering details, but the science to do this has existed for a while already. The design is surprisingly streamlined, maybe double the size of an extra fuel container such as a boat would already carry. The resulting plastics-based fuel is not as refined as automobile gasoline, but boats run on a cruder grade. Even so, the prototypes are showing promise in the lab, and maybe the design can be refined further to create auto-grade gasoline.” Sophie blew out an excited breath. “Just think of it—every boat out there, especially in third world countries where fishermen are living a subsistence existence and plastic pollution in the water is rampant . . . every one of them would now be on the hunt for plastic garbage to fuel their boat, and they would be able to run them almost cost-free! Plastic debris in the water would decrease in no time.”
Lei tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, setting off a sparkle from her narrow, channel set diamond wedding band. “What was the problem between Peterson and Ramsey?”
“Ramsey was the one who came up with the fuel converter, while Peterson came up with the catcher and crusher elements. According to my hack into their company records, they’re receiving many offers to buy the separate pieces of technology that make up the system, versus releasing a single integrated device, as they originally designed. Ramsey is claiming that his portion, the fuel converter, has more commercial value. He and his lawyer argue that if they keep the system intact, and release it as is, it will not be worth as much as selling off elements of it to big corporations.”
The tightening of Lei’s gut signaled a new appreciation for the ramifications of this case, and possible motives for Peterson’s murder. “Let me guess . . . Ramsey inherits Peterson’s half of the partnership should Peterson be killed.”
“Exactly, and vice versa. That was one of the conditions of their partnership. They could not leave their ownership share of the invention to their families.”
“The Peterson’s lawyer speculated that he might have pulled a disappearance himself,” Lei said.
“That wouldn’t make much sense, at least from a financial standpoint. All Peterson would be able to do is sell his catcher and crusher designs, at a fraction of what the IP would have brought in for him. He only had title to his portion of the invention and copies of those plans, not Ramsey’s converter design. Peterson’s lawyer is right—the plastic fuel converter has bigger implications for application.”
“Now we have motive for murder,” Lei said. “Maybe the plan was to imitate a robbery gone wrong, to obscure the real reason if Peterson was killed.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Lei pulled into the Kahului Police Station and navigated to her assigned parking spot under a well-trimmed rainbow shower tree. The ornamental planting cast multihued petals all over her truck in late summer, a cleanup problem she enjoyed each year.
“We need a time of death from Chaz’s autopsy, and to check on Ramsey’s whereabouts at that time,” Lei murmured.
“Chaz?” Sophie’s voice sharpened. “You didn’t say anything about finding a body.”
Lei filled her in on the recent discovery. “Dr. G thinks the killer was a professional.”
“That would make sense, given what you’ve told m
e about his execution. I know it’s not standard operational procedure, but I thought ahead of Ramsey and his alibi, and snooped a bit into his whereabouts. Enviro Enterprises headquarters is located in Seattle, and Ramsey was logged into and out of the building’s security system all week while the Petersons were in Hawaii.”
“That kind of work attendance can be faked,” Lei remembered one of her cases where an accountant had checked in with his receptionist, went into a locked office where he was supposedly working, and then exited out a back door.
“Indeed, yes. But in my opinion, Ramsey would not have dirtied his hands personally with this murder.”
“Especially given that Peterson’s wife and daughters were on board. He’d have known them socially,” Lei said. The diary she’d retrieved from the wreck waited for her in the office like a ticking time bomb—it was going to make Peterson’s missing daughter even more real. “Find out anything else?”
“Isn’t that enough?” Sophie huffed in mock outrage. “I could tell you Peterson’s toilet paper brand, but that might be considered creepy. For the record, it’s Charmin.”
Lei chuckled. “You are creepy. I need you in my back pocket on every case.”
“Ha. I was up most of last night scouting this for you. Good thing I’m working pro bono.” Sophie’s keyboard rattled with activity. “I still have some keyword searches out doing their data collection—I’ll call you if anything new turns up.”
“Thanks, Sophie. You’re an angel.” Lei said goodbye, and slid her phone into her pocket.
Back at the Kahului office, Stevens finished unpacking his crime scene backpack, replacing any used evidence bags, fingerprint powder or gel tape and writing up his notes from the body discovery, while Mahoe processed the photos from Chaz’s body retrieval. They had a meeting with Lei and Captain Omura in an hour to map out next steps on the case.
His burner phone vibrated in its leather holster at his waist. Stevens kept the cheap minutes-only texting phone separate from the one he used for work and home. The number was reserved for those who should have as little information as possible about him or his family—confidential informants. In the years since he’d been a lieutenant on Maui, in charge of his own station at one time, he’d built up a network of eyes and ears throughout the islands.